The aim of this book is to introduce you to the world of Power Query in Excel. You will find myriad features and techniques in Query and you will see how straighforward it is to get to grips with them. By the end of this book, you will have worked on many real-life data sets and their solution. For example, how to clean your dirty data. You will be able to use your data sources over and over again in many useful ways. Moreover, Query is automated Excel ... everything you do is really a template that Query will apply every time you update or change your data: incredible in its simplicity!
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About the author
Duncan Williamson is addicted to lifelong learning and uses the opportunity of writing books for Bookboon as an excuse to study new ideas and materials in his chosen areas of interest. Duncan holds an MBA from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, a Certificate of Education from Sunderland Polytechnic and an HND in Business Studies from Teesside Polytechnic. In addition, Duncan has successfully completed the Diploma of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and recently received a Certificate in Data Analysis from the University of Texas at Austin.
Duncan has studied, worked with and taught many aspects of management accounting, financial accounting and bookkeeping, financial reporting under IFRS, corporate finance, financial analysis, financial and spreadsheet modelling. He has worked on the financial and economic appraisal of projects in several countries over many years. He has published books and articles, case studies and so on. Over the last four years or so, Duncan has written four books for Bookboon in his series, Excel Solutions for Accountants, as well as two books on Finance for the Non Financial Manager and a book on Report Writing for Finance Professionals. He also wrote the book The Accounting and Bookkeeping Coach, published in April 2014 by Hodder and Stoughton, Prentice Hall published his Cost and Management Accounting in 1995 and he has self published a number of books including his 2012 major spreadsheet book The Excel Project … available on amazon.co.uk. Duncan has also written and published a wide number of books aimed at pre University and first year undergraduate level students.
Duncan has always loved travelling and over the last three decades or so he has lived and worked (from as little as a week to as long as five years) in such countries as Malawi, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Romania, United Kingdom, Denmark, Afghanistan, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Hungary, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Bahrain, Pakistan, Holland, Sudan, Albania, Qatar, Mexico, Angola, Ghana, Tanzania, Angola and Mozambique.
In terms of hobbies and interests, Duncan clearly loves travelling: in addition to the countries he has worked in, he has visited another 35 – 40 countries. Cultural and ethnic differences and similarities are a fascination for him too. Duncan loves taking photographs and reckons that for every hundred of his serious attempts at photography, one might be good! Duncan loves writing and creating training and learning materials; both for his work and as part of his lifelong learning crusade: keeping his brain cells fully engaged. More than that, you will find Duncan on discussion lists, in various online forums in which he fully engages with others in putting the world to rights and to helping people solve their Excel, modelling and accounting problems.
Another travel connection comes from Duncan's modelling and spreadsheeting skills with which he has recently started to model data from commercial aircraft: altitude, speed, latitudes and longitudes; mapping the history of a particular aircraft over a one year period, that can involve as many as 1,000, 1,500 and even more flights. This aspect of his interests involves using Excel and Power BI.
Even though he lives in Thailand now, he still follows the English Premier League and his favourite club Burnley FC.
